Ireland day 1497. Monday 03 November 2025- Malahide Activity

Today’s summary	A busy morning. Went into Malahide for some errands first thing. Then had the boiler service followed by a video call with family. Had snacks for lunch and took Val to the airport for a flying visit to the UK. Spent the rest of the afternoon on a hill-and-coast walk and got some 75% off pastries on the way. Curry from yesterday for dinner, followed by YouTube travel videos
Today’s weather	Overcast with occasional sun and some light drizzle. Moderate south westerly wind. Appx 15c

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of my route)		Close-up location (The blue line shows where I walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Hill and Coast after Airport

Commentary

Even though we are making a conscious effort to dial-down our lifestyles a bit at the moment, we still seemed to be pretty busy today.

As soon as we had got up and had breakfast, I headed out into Malahide to catch up with a few errands. Meanwhile, Val sorted out our annual boiler service – the engineer duly arrived at 9am and efficiently spent half an hour checking it over. He declared himself satisfied with everything and gave it a clean bill of health for another twelve months.

By this time, I was back from the shops, just in time to say goodbye to the boiler man. That gave us a few minutes for a quick cup of coffee before I started a 10am video call with family in Sheffield, UK.

I spent an enjoyable hour on the call after which we had an early light lunch before heading out in the Trusty Yaris to the airport. Val is making a flying visit to the UK to catch up with more family tonight. I returned to the flat after dropping her off, calling at the Applegreen petrol station to fill up on the way.

When I got back, the weather was still reasonably good. So I decided to take advantage of it and go out on my favourite “hill and coast” loop walk via Portmarnock. It was very enjoyable, as always, and especially so because today I managed pick up some bargain pastries (75% off!), as well as a good cup of tea, from the Spar shop on the way. I enjoyed tea and pastry (I restrained-ly only had one, and saved the rest for later) in the newly repainted bathing shelter in the beach. Very relaxing.

Fortunately the weather stayed mostly dry for the walk back, despite black clouds scudding in my direction, and the flecks of drizzle in the air.

By the time I got back to the flat, it was already early evening, despite the fact that it wasn’t even five o’clock. Anyway, it’s only about six weeks until the solstice, so it won’t be long before the days start lengthening again.

In the evening, Val called to confirm her straightforward and timely arrival in London. We also spent a few minutes catching up on the rest of our respective afternoons’ activities.

For the remainder of the evening, I had more of yesterday’s curry for dinner, then rounded it off with a couple of YouTube travel videos. My (not-so) secret vice when Val’s away!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Breakfast this morning consisted of tea and Ireland’s third-best muesli (ref: yesterday)	Google Maps proudly declares that this artefact in Malahide Demesne is a “Wooden Castle”. That makes it sound like a sight worth traveling from far and wide to see. Actually what it is is a dead tree stump roughly carved with a chainsaw into a roughly castellate form. Still, it makes a virtue out of the unfortunate tree’s demise

Looking south over Dublin to the mountains from close to the top of Paddy’s Hill	Four pastries for €1.50. What’s not to like? Especially as I had a piece of fruit to offset completely all the bad carbohydrates etc in the bakery delicacies



My hilltop redoubt